“The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible, and achieve it, generation after generation.”
- Pearl S. Buck

Today’s young people are growing up facing an increasingly uncertain future. The rising cost of a college education, “a war that won’t end in our lifetime” (in the words of current Vice President Dick Cheney), widespread environmental destruction, the growing threat of a nuclear holocaust – these are some of the many challenges confronting today’s high school-aged citizenry.

Yet, high school students in general remain disempowered. Teenagers are offered very few viable opportunities to change the course of the problems that are threatening their future. Young people are bombarded with messages from everyone – their parents, their teachers, and more experienced activists – telling them it’s their responsibility to change the world – but it’s very rare that anyone gives them any idea of how.

It is in the spirit of engaging and empowering America’s next generation of peace leaders that the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Youth Empowerment Initiative launched its Peace Leadership Clubs program in 2006. The program aims to cultivate effective organizing and leadership skills among high school-aged throughout the United States. With the quote above in mind, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation wants to support today’s high school students in achieving the impossible: the creation of a peaceful and prosperous future, for themselves and for all future generations.

What is a Peace Leadership Club?

A Peace Leadership Club is an organization based on a high school campus that works to educate and organize high school aged-youth to find alternatives to militarism and nuclear weapons.

Nuclear weapons and militarism are by no means the only problems facing today’s young people, but they are easily among the most pressing. The increasing advances in military technology have put the fate of the earth and its inhabitants in an increasingly unstable position. Meanwhile, the cost of maintaining the United States’ immense system of weapons and war-making is draining money away from education, prompting the cost of a college education (an essential human right in our society) to skyrocket.

Any high school organization that is supportive of the following goals is eligible to be recognized as an NAPF Peace Leadership Club:

• Prioritize spending for education, not war.
• The militarization of our schools perpetuate systems of oppression on our campuses and threaten our civil liberties. High school campuses should be demilitarized, as a starting point for demilitarizing our society as a whole. (For more info on the concept of “demilitarization,” see the NAPF’s Demilitarization Guide.)
• Nuclear weapons should be abolished – global security is more important than so-called “national security.”

The NAPF’s main role with respect to each Peace Leadership Club is to provide training, advice, and connections to speakers for events, so as to make each club’s work more effective, coordinated, and powerful. If you are part of an existing high school student organization, we invite you to contact us to become part of our Peace Leadership Club network.

How to Start a Peace Leadership Club?

(The following was inspired by the Student Environmental Action Coalition’s Organizing Guide, 2002 http://www.campusactivism.org/uploads/sognov2002printable.pdf)

The first step in starting a Peace Leadership Club is to start organizing. What is organizing? According to the Midwest Academy, organizing is “overwhelmingly about personal relationships. It is about changing the world and changing how individuals act together. The relationships organizers develop are their most important resources and forming relationships their most important talent.”

Since organizing is about relationships, start by making a list of people you have relationships with who can assist you in your efforts. Do you know any teachers who might be interested in helping you start a peace leadership club? Teachers who might know teachers who might be interested? Any friends or acquaintances who have expressed any kind of interested in creating a more peaceful world? Write them down, and prepare to reach out to them. Ideally, you want to have a group of 2-3 friends and a faculty advisor to work with before moving onto the next steps of organizing.

One of your relationships should be with the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation – we may know of people and resources in your area we can hook you up. We’d also be more than happy to walk you through the process of organizing, either by phone or by e-mail.

Logistics

Inevitably, organizing involves a lot of logistics. Some of the logistics you should take into account: how to officially “register” an organizing on campus, how to reserve rooms to hold meetings, and where to go to get funds in your community. Your main initial goal should be simply to reserve a room for your “Kick-Off Meeting” (see below).

When you are first starting out, write down all of the logistics that will go into holding your first meeting, and identify the people you will need to talk to in order to take care of the logistics. Then, begin contacting those people.

Initial Planning

Once you have a group of at least 2-3 friends together and a room reserved, you’re ready to begin planning for the Kick-Off Meeting. Prepare an “agenda” (e.g., which subjects to discuss at the meeting, who will make presentations, what videos or images you’ll show at the meeting, etc.)

One of your roles as an organizer is to make the other people in the group feel empowered, so be sure not to decide any policies or assign any official “positions” (i.e., president, vice president, etc.) until the larger group can vote on it.

Outreach

Outreach is one of the constants of organizing. Below is a simple plan for outreach, taken from the Student Environmental Action Coalition organizing guide of 2002:

1. Answer the question: Why would someone want to join this group? (It may be different for different people, but the answer should be a part of all the outreach you do.)
2. General Publicity: You want to broadcast far and wide that a club is forming. There are a plethora of different ways to do general publicity. Publicity efforts can include: e-mails to individuals and listservs, posters, making announcements in your classes, leaflets, table tents (folded leaflets on cafeteria tables), chalking the sidewalk or blackboards, banners, ads or articles in the campus newspaper), etc. You may want to set up a table in the campus quad, cafeteria, or other places people gather. Have pens and paper out for people to sign up with their contact information. [Hint: put your name on the list – no one like to be “first.”] In general, the more people hear about your group, the more likely they are to get involved, so try lots of different strategies for publicity. Remember to put the time and place of your kick-off meeting on everything, as well as contact information in case people have further questions.
3. Lists: Develop a list of interested people. Only a fraction of the list will probably be active members, but it’s good to keep as many people informed about your work as possible. Get in one-on-one contact with the people on your list to remind them about the kick-off meeting and learn about why they are interested in the issues. Personal contact is almost always the most effective means of outreach, but if you don’t have lots of time, a small reminder via email or on someone’s answering machine is better than nothing.

Kick-Off Meeting

The Kick-Off meeting is essential for many reasons. First, it gets all of the people interested in your group together in one room to discuss their plans. Second, it creates a sense in everyone who participates feel as though they are a part of something new, exciting, and important.

Above all, the meeting should be fun and participatory, and do everything you can to make everyone who attends feel empowered (for example, make sure that the most active members of the group aren’t sitting together, take time for everyone to give introductions at the beginning of the meeting, and provide lots of opportunities throughout the meeting for everyone to speak). If possible, provide free food. Provide literature (news articles, fact sheets, web site print-outs, etc.) that support your work. Also, be sure to pass around a sheet to collect everybody’s name, phone number, and e-mail.

The main goal of the meeting is to create a list of future activities that everyone at the meeting is interested in and wants to work on in subsequent weeks and months. Set aside time to brainstorm group projects, and come prepared with a few projects to propose of your own. Try to keep the discussion focused without stifling anyone’s creativity – group decisions tend to be more productive, and ideas that seem strange at first can end up being visionary. It is vitally important that as many people as possible be involved in the decision-making process, and that they have a personal stake in the group.

For more specific suggestions, please contact us. And once you’ve had the Kick-Off Meeting, be sure to contact us then too! Again, we want to provide you with any resources and support that we can.

Best of luck, and we look forward to connecting with you!